Simple Ways to Cut Back on the Number of Calories You Eat
Nutrition is a complicated sometimes, so I’ll try not to make it more complicated. I want to go through some simple ways to help you cut back in the amount of calories you consume on a daily basis.
I am a big fan of calorie counting. I feel that this is the best way to keep track of how many calories you consume on a daily basis. There are several ways to approach weight loss. This is the way that I prefer to council my clients.
I want to go through some simple, everyday ways to cut back calories.
(None of which counting is needed.)
The first one is SLOW DOWN! I know this is hard because of the type of lives we live. A go, go, go lifestyle makes slowing down hard. Even just taking a few more minutes to eat is important. I talk to so many people on a daily basis that never eat. Some of them don’t eat breakfast and others don’t eat lunch at all. I don’t get this, especially when they tell me “I want to lose weight”. You have to eat to lose weight. If you don’t eat your body stops processing the food that you do eat. Your body starts thinking it isn’t getting enough food to work. I am not going to waste what food I am getting so I’m going to store it as fat for energy later. Then people ask why am I not losing weight? Duh, you’re not eating! Daily nutrition is a must; you can’t just eat junk food and expect to lose weight.
So the second bit of advice to losing weight is to eat at least 3 meals a day. Ideally 5 to 6 meals, but we’ll get to that another time. A way to help you make sure you get breakfast is by getting some healthy breakfast bars. Ideally I would like for you to sit down and eat a nice well rounded breakfast, but just getting something in your system is a start.
Next is cut out the second helping. I know this is so hard to do. Believe me I love the second helping. In my house my dad always got first dibs then I did. Being the male of the family it seems that it is a right of passage to get to finish off the rest of the food. Take a few minutes after eating that first helping to talk to your family or friends. Use this time to let your stomach send your brain the news that it is full. Now in the beginning your stomach will tell you that it still needs food. This is because you are use to eating more food. It will take you a couple of days for your stomach to adjust. It is amazingly quick how fast your stomach adjusts.
Here are a few things you can do when you go out to eat.
Share the main course of food
If you don’t want to do that ask for a “to go” box when they give you your food and put half the food into the box.
Ask if they have a lunch menu. These portions are usually smaller than the main course meals.
DON”T SUPERSIZE ANYTHING! Get the smaller portion. When asked what size ask for the smallest size.
Look for the Weight Watchers symbol. This usually means it has less fat. I have found that the portion size is just as big as the regular, so don’t over eat.
The last thing I want to leave you with is the best exercise of all to combat over eating:
It is called the push back. Push yourself away from the table and call it quits.
I hope some of the info will help you be able to cut a few more calories.
Obviously, there are a bunch of ways to combat weight loss through nutrition. I don’t diet unless I am training for a competition of some kind. I try to make sure that whatever food I am eating is healthy for me. My biggest problem is over eating. I can put the food away. So I have to make sure that I use the “push back” exercise a lot.
I hope these tips have helped. If you have more questions please feel free to email me or call me. You can call me at 765-404-7343 or by email at eric_walden@waldospersonaltraining.com
